A Snowball from the Beit She'an Valley

local landscape. Within the quasi-photographic A Snowball freezing of the motions of life and work in the from the Beit kibbutz, a “nice kibbutz member” created a simple and spherical white form in his She’an Valley hands, and with a single movement sent it in the direction of little Efrat Natan’s body. Contained in this vivid and primal memory are Aya Miron some of the essences that are fundamental to many of her works: simple and instantaneous creation from materials available in the “My earliest memory: snow in Kfar Ruppin, immediate vicinity; a conspicuous presence I’m a quarter to three years old. A nice kibbutz of the color white, mostly in relations with a member makes a snowball and throws it dark background; an engagement with the to me”.1 surrounding physical space within which the movement of bodies in defined directions is marked; discernible relations between large and small; and, perhaps the most fundamental and important of them all – a unique blending of minimalism, which aims for reduction of color and form, with body art, whose theatrical dimensions require a human presence and a duration in a defined time. Natan’s body actions make do with little, with a primary nucleus of an experience – but, like a snowball that accumulates volume as it rolls, they Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin in the snow, 1950; courtesy of Hagar Natan are a kind of once-in-a-lifetime event that keeps on thickening for a long time after it The whiteness of the rare snowfall in happened; and – like the snow that melts – is the winter of 1950 in Kfar Ruppin – the kibbutz the end of something has a form that is worth Efrat Natan grew up in, in one of the warmest contemplating. regions in this country, the Beit She’an Valley – Efrat Natan, the youngest child of infused it with something of the European pioneers who came from Germany, was born landscape from which her parents had come, in 1947 in Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin, which was and probably cast a strangeness on the familiar founded in 1938 as a “tower and stockade” settlement. The kibbutz is located on the 1 All quotations of Efrat Natan’s words cited from eastern border of the Beit She’an Valley: its here on without footnote references are from fields and fishponds extend to the Jordan conversations I had with her during the last decade and particularly in the years 2014–2015 while River, in a landscape bounded by the Gilead preparing for the exhibition. and Gilboa ranges. When she was 21 she began —226 taking painting classes at the Avni Institute in frameworks she employs, ties together a black-and-white and joined with the black- Tel Aviv (with Yehezkel Streichman, Avshalom polyphonic arrangement of diverse images and and-white photographs of body actions that Okashi, Mina Zisselman and David Kaftori as practices from art history. were a common mode of representation in her teachers). About two years later she met Until the early ’70s Natan lived in Conceptual Art – and the modest modernist Raffi Lavie, and moved on to study with him the kibbutz, and her artistic activities there architecture of the kibbutz also connected as her private teacher in Ramat Gan. There, were not seen as deviant; on the contrary: somehow with Minimalist sculpture. like other students of Lavie, among them Yair her artistic abilities served the kibbutz, which “Minimalism was already established Garbuz, Nahum Tevet, Tamar Getter and Ehud for its part enabled her to express herself by and articulated, and we sought to do Pecker, Natan absorbed – besides knowledge artistic means: “I was a useful artist for the something new with it. Head Sculpture, for of art history – some of the new messages kibbutz. I prepared posters and stage sets example [#6–10], was a fusion of Minimalist of the art of the ’60s and ’70s, and with them for the festivals. The festival pageants at the sculpture with Body Art. The Minimalism went Ceremonial doll depicting a masquerader wearing a new way of thinking that changed the kibbutz were a kind of Happenings”, she well with my shyness: it was a kind of mask. a Wanyugo firespitter Janus mask, Senufo people, traditional conceptions of visual art. Prominent recounts. Influences of her childhood and of The space, which sits strongly in my body, led Ivory Coast, early 20th century, pigment on wood among the leading currents in those years life in the kibbutz in the ’50s mixed well with me to Body Art”, Natan says. Body Art sets and burlap, 40×12; collection of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, gift of Eva and Semi Sznajderman, were Minimalism and Conceptual Art, the buds the art world she encountered in the ’70s. At up the artist’s body as a central object to be Jerusalem, in honor of Clara Sznajderman, Caracas, of which had already appeared in the work that time various aspects of kibbutz customs viewed, and puts the tension between the Venezuela (B06.0303a-b) of Marcel Duchamp in the early years of the seemed to her quite similar to the actions body as subject and as object in the center 20th century. This is the framework she works and to the means of performative expression of the action. Many artists – for example influences and sources of inspiration, and in to this day, though influences from various of Conceptual Art. The Happenings and the Hermann Nitsch or Chris Burden, and also the perhaps the paucity of works opens up spaces periods and cultures in art history have been “radical” Performances of the art of the ’60s Israelis Motti Mizrachi, Yocheved Weinfeld through which it’s easier to see a multiplicity drawn into it. She has drawn inspiration from and ’70s reminded her of ceremonies and and Gideon Gechtman – have focused on the of influences. I think of my art works as Egyptian and African artifacts,2 and blended festival pageants in the kibbutz, and of the fire wounded, deviant, or bleeding artist’s body. mushrooms that spring up from inside a large them with Western-Christian iconography inscriptions and the oath ceremonies in the With Natan, however, the point of departure and tangled network of hyphae”. Natan’s and influences from modernist movements youth movement. Making do with little, an was the space that surrounds her body – a silences – the long periods during which she such as German Expressionism, Surrealism, ideological imperative in the austerity period space which includes and contains, from the did not create any new works (principally and Futurism. Just as, before falling asleep of the ’50s in Israel, returned like an echo from outside in, and one within the other, the earth the long interval between 1979 and 1992) – in the kibbutz children’s house, she heard a movements such as the Italian Arte Povera and the sky, the four wind directions, the remind her of the rhythms of the ceremonial diversity of stories told by different parents (perhaps a precedent to what in the ’80s was specific landscape, the architectural environs appearances of African ritual objects: “In my all at the same time, Natan, in the conceptual described as the Israeli “Want of Matter”).3 of the kibbutz, and the bed inside them. Each first art book, Africa: The Art of the Negro Peoples, The improvisation practiced in the kibbutz, to one of these elements has been powerfully I read about one of the masks that it appears manage with “what there is” in the immediate interiorized into her body consciousness and once every 25 years in a performance honoring 2 Natan: “I had a ‘Germanic’ love for ancient Egypt, with its mythology and cosmology. The similarity vicinity, morphed into ready-made works and through it has received its artistic expression. the spirits of the dead, and remains hidden between the Nile River and the Jordan River, an the use of found objects. The photographs Minimalism has been a channel that enabled most of the time. In my art there are relics of aunt who served in Egypt during the Second World that recounted the history and the mythology her to evade expressive exposure of the magical thought and shamanic practices; at any War, who had a book called The Glory of Egypt with beautiful pictures in black-and-white, Thomas Mann’s of the kibbutz influenced Natan’s language of body, and to a large extent has tightened and rate, for me this was a model to relate to”. The Joseph and His Brothers which I read in the early ’70s, a empowered the images she has created. materials and the objects used by shamans are trip with my father to Egypt in 1983 – all these infected “My relatively few works have been charged with magical energies that operate me with an Egyptomania. My final school project in 3 See Sarah Breitberg-Semmel, The Want of Matter: Year 11 dealt with the relation of Africa’s leaders to A Quality in Israeli Art, exh. cat. (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv spread over large intervals of time. This may by means of the body – and Natan too has tribal culture”. Museum of Art, 1986), be the reason why they’ve absorbed many succeeded in creating tight and powerful 225— —224 images that bring to mind the presence of which was discussed extensively in kibbutz the “Metzer-Messer Project” (1972).8 In this religious artifacts, like icons in churches or society and has been examined by more action she connected three artist friends to her other ceremonial objects that are charged than a few researchers and authors7 – was body;9 they stood together, back to back, each with magical powers and exert an influence on often accompanied by a variety of private facing and pointing to one of the four cardinal congregations of believers.

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